The movie industry is keen to take control from technology firms
Sony is to make its top 500 films available digitally in the next year.
Michael Arrieta, senior vice president of Sony Pictures, said at a US Digital Hollywood conference that it wanted to create an "iTunes" for films.

Films will be put onto flash memory for mobiles over the next year, said Mr Arrieta, and it will develop its digital download services for films.

Movie studios are keen to stop illegal file-sharing on peer-to-peer nets and cash in on digital the download market.

Movie piracy cost the industry £3.7bn ($7bn) in 2003, according to analysts.

The movie industry body, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has started a campaign of legal action against operators of BitTorrent, eDonkey and DirectConnect peer-to-peer networks.

Cashing in

"We want to set business models, pricing models, distribution models like (Apple chief Steve) Jobs did for music, but for the film industry," Mr Arrieta told Cnet news.

Sony and plans by other movie studio, according to Cnet news, are set to wrestle power, and financial gain, from any single technology giant - like Apple - which has had success with iTunes for music downloads.

The PSP was launched in the US on 24 March
There are legal film sites now, such as Movielink, which provides access to a limited catalogue of legal films.

There remain big issues to giving people more access to films and other digital content anywhere, anytime.

Issues over protecting and controlling the distribution of content once it has been legally downloaded and moved to a portable device, for instance, still concern the movie industry.

But with the growing popularity of powerful portable entertainment devices, such as Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP), which can play movies and other multimedia content, it is becoming a pressing concern for the industry.

The PSP went on sale in the US on 24 March and the first million came with Spider-Man 2.

But films for the device are available in Sony's own format, called UMD, which are physical discs.

Lions Gate Entertainment and Disney have announced forthcoming film titles that will be made available on the format.

The Digital Hollywood conference in the US runs from 29 March to 1 April.

Sony and plans by other movie studio, according to Cnet news, are set to wrestle power, and financial gain, from any single technology giant - like Apple - which has had success with iTunes for music downloads.

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This doesn't look too good for Apple playing a big part in this at least not gaining much revenue from the involvement. Let's just hope Apple can be involved in some way anyhow, so that this doesn't become a Windows only offer.

This doesn't look too good for Apple playing a big part in this at least not gaining much revenue from the involvement. Let's just hope Apple can be involved in some way anyhow, so that this doesn't become a Windows only offer.

Click to expand...

i would think steve would not have pulled the sony chap out on stage at macworld unless he had a deal in the bag with sony ?

Yeah, I did not get the impression that Apple will be a part of this... It actually sounds like Sony wants to develop the technology themselves so Apple *can't* start an iTunes for movies. Which I've been waiting for Apple to do since day 1... then with a color iPod but no video playback, I realized that it's not a sure thing...

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